@brunorr: This game has way points. This game has fetch quests. It's no more of an open world than any Elder Scrolls game. It's extremely different than any Zelda game before it and somehow that makes people think it's the best game ever.
@Chunkman: Even as an open world game I do not find this to be particularly exciting. There are no good items to find, no good armor to find, any weapon you find will break very quickly. You get champion weapons but they don't last very long. I found I stopped caring about opening chests. The only classic tunic you can get without buying an amiibo can only be unlocked once you have done just about everything in the game and does not carry over to new saves. It doesn't even offer more than one save slot, a feature that is inexcusable for this kind of game to not have. Side quests are dull and give little reward. I felt no reason to explore as it produced no reward. Other than the fact that they tried to change Zelda into a different game I see nothing that makes this game stand out.
I just don't get it. What about this game is so amazing? It has a very large area that you can wander around, yes. You can do side quests for little reward, yes. You can spend countless hours looking for shrines that have simple puzzles that take less time to complete than it did to find the shrine. If that's your thing fine, there are plenty of other open world games out there. But why does Zelda have to focus so much on it? Why downplay what has always been the most important part of Zelda, the dungeons? Why is farming materials and weapons/shields/bows that break so much more fun than a Zelda game that had clever dungeon designs with fun puzzles to solve? One of my problems with Majora's Mask was that there were so few dungeons. Now they did it again, made the dungeons much simpler, and added a bunch of busy work as well and for some reason people love it! I just don't get it....
I'm sorry but I feel the open world aspect hurt this game. The open world and RPG aspects added to this Zelda are neat and help to expand the gameplay but it came at the expense of the dungeon design. Zelda has always been about the dungeons but here the few dungeons we get are short and simple. There are shrines scattered about but it takes longer to find the shrine then it does to complete the puzzle inside of it. I just don't see what is so amazing about this game and Zelda is my favorite game series ever. I feel like they downplayed the most important part of a Zelda game and everyone cheered because of it.
Well, I finished it. My final thoughts are: This is a good Nintendo Elder Scrolls game, but a disappointing Zelda game. It implements a lot of good ideas from other open world games and it is fun. However the dungeons are short, easy, and not even necessary to finish. If you finish them all they bring down Ganon's health to half. People praise this game for how similar it is to open world games like Skyrim, but that's not what I wanted. I wanted a Zelda game. A game that focused on puzzles rather than busy work like farming weapons. I farmed heart containers so I could get the Master Sword, I farmed rupees to unlock the great fairies, I farmed materials to upgrade my armor. But in the end, I didn't need them. The part of the game I was preparing for, that I was excited for, it was over in a snap. The busy work however lasted for hours.
You summed up my feelings pretty well. As Nintendo's own version of an Elder Scrolls game, this is a great game. But as a Zelda game it's disappointing.
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